Moses, Let My Gold Go!

I really don't know what to make of stories like this one. Now, the immediate reaction is to say "what bullshit, oh my God...." When one considers, though, how often people around the world wear their ethnicities' (or societies') history of oppression and wrongedness as rationales for their actions, it doesn't seem quite as far-fetched; after all, many defenses, especially, in the United States are based on 'two hundred years of persecution and yadda yadda yadda.' Such thinking is, ultimately, a result of an extremely litigious international society, but I think the problems go deeper than that. The Egyptians can sue for theft, the Jews for persecution; the Jews can sue the Christians for persecution and oppression, the Christians the Jews for supposed accomplicity in the act of deicide; all religions can sue the Mongols for the raiding and looting of their culture in the Middle Ages, and the Mongols can sue, well, I'm sure there's something.... And in this case, I wonder who could sue the Egyptians for their gold, stolen from them thousands of years ago. The Ethiopians, perhaps?

The thing is, we lend credence to some of these arguments. Historical wrongedness remains a quasi-acceptable defense for some groups, but an unacceptable one for others. Human history, unfortunately, is about winners and losers, about victims and victimizers-- and this becomes more and more difficult when one considers who, really, are the victims? doesn't everyone become a victim at one point or another, even as the victimizer? and how long does one accept this victim mentality as a rationale for one's less than righteous actions? And, perhaps, most of all, where does this daisy-chain of mutual fuckery end and begin? And when does the "You done me wrong" mentality cease to be a viable defense?

Round and round and round, pointlessly. Perhaps we should all donate everything we have to whatever the first society was, Eden or Jarmo or whatever, and live the rest of our lives indentured to our history of victimization and wrongedness (and our sublimated and denied period of victimizing and wronging others). Or do we establish a statute of limitations? But if we do this, how do we arbitrarily decide when one should be forgiven, or worse, when one should forgive and forget?

Ask any wronged lover. There is no statute on when 'things just go away.' Sometimes history evaporates, sometimes it lingers. Some injuries are forgotten before the scar is formed; some remain long after the actual injury has apparently healed.

Such arguments are disturbing because they are both intensely rational and historical in nature, but also absurd and pointless ultimately; this is the point where sense becomes nonsense, or when nonsense starts to make sense. And while this can be a profoundly interesting thing in relation to literature and metaphysics, it gets us nowhere in the real world. It becomes the myth of the ouroboros, the snake that eats its tail. It becomes a world only lawyers love.

Maybe Shakespeare had it wrong: First thing we do, let's kill all the litigants!

Oh, but wait, that would just make for more litigants. Ugh. Move on people, move da fuck on.